Equipo Crónica

EQUIPO CRÓNICA (Valencia, 1964 - 1981).
"The prints of the kite".
Folder with 5 serigraphs.
Issue 45/75.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Measurements: 100 x 70 cm. each one.

This folder, composed of five silkscreen prints, is a masterful example of the working method of Equipo Crónica, the duo formed by Manolo Valdés and Rafael Solbes. True to their style, which fuses Pop Art with a profound critique and re-reading of art history, the artists use the appropriation of iconic images to comment on the social and political reality of their time, as well as on the very nature of painting. The title, "The Kite Stamps," could suggest a game or a pastime, a metaphor for their own artistic activity: launching the icons of history into the air to see them fly in a new context.

In "The Staircase," Equipo Crónica takes as a direct reference Marcel Duchamp's masterpiece, "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2." However, they replace Duchamp's abstract, futuristic figure with an automaton or robot with a heavy, metallic appearance, accentuated by the use of vibrant orange colors in its joints. This mechanized being descends a monumental and classical staircase, possibly that of a museum or palace. The silkscreen creates a temporal and stylistic clash: Duchamp's avant-garde becomes an industrial-era object that invades a solemn, academic space, questioning the role of avant-garde art within the museum institution.

In "The Infanta", the dialogue is established with Velázquez. The portrait of the Infanta Margarita, taken directly from "Las Meninas", occupies the center of the composition. However, her serene figure and court dress are framed and violently intervened at the top by an aggressive form. The Infanta, a symbol of monarchy and historical power, appears to be being "executed" or tormented by the violence and tragedy represented by the style of "Guernica," a potent metaphor for Spain's historical and political tensions.

The other three serigraphs are: "El sueño", in which they appropriate representations of saints and philosophers in the Baroque, introducing as a disruptive element a huge piece of military machinery. In "El taller" there is an explosion of references, a sort of meta-narrative of the creative process itself. It combines the synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Braque with the energy and flat colors of Pop Art by Roy Lichtenstein or Léger. The wink to the latter is also displayed in "The Excursion", the first of the silkscreen prints.

Equipo Crónica was a group of Spanish painters active between 1964 and 1981. It was founded by Manolo Valdés, Juan Antonio Toledo, who soon left the group, and Rafael Solbes, whose death in 1981 put an end to the project. The historian and critic Tomás Llorens was also a member of the group. He explains the theoretical basis of the Equipo in a text entitled "La distanciación de la Distanciación" (The Distancing of Distanciation). Likewise, the three painters signed a manifesto in 1965, where they defined themselves as a working group with collective methods and supra-individual goals. Equipo Crónica moved away from the prevailing informalism to cultivate a figurative painting, closely linked to pop-art. Fed up with introspection, these artists went out into the street and observed the world around them, a society of incipient industrialization and tourists. Their style involved a unique blend of realism, criticism, pop, pictorial quotations, anachronisms and bittersweet pastiches. The group produced paintings, sculptures and engravings, and used to work in series, which allowed them to analyze the same subject with different variations. Equipo Crónica starts from a very simple language, with monochrome and repeated images, very close to contemporary media, especially newspaper photographs. There are works by Equipo Crónica in the IVAM in Valencia, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Juan March Foundation and the Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid, among others. In 2007 an exhibition dedicated to Equipo Crónica was organized at the Museo de Arte Abstracto in Cuenca.